The record book is ruined beyond repair. The Hall of Fame will never be the same. But transparency has come to Major League Baseball.

This is a big victory for Bud Selig.

The advent of in-season, unannounced blood testing, which Selig unveiled Thursday, means baseball players are on red alert like they’ve never been before. It means that baseball’s commissioner has pinned his legacy on a drug war the way the NFL commissioner is battling a concussion epidemic.

The shift in policy comes at a necessary time.

The 2012 season began with Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun’s successful banned-substance appeal, which infuriated Selig. It featured a 50-game suspension to All-Star Game MVP Melky Cabrera, who helped San Francisco make the playoffs and the National League earn home-field advantage in the World Series.

Luckily, the Giants didn’t need either to win a championship. But when the season ended, there was a feeling that the cheaters were creeping back into the game, that the rewards were beginning to outweigh the risks once again.

This counterpunch, in the form of heavy-duty drug testing for all, means Major League Baseball has earned your trust and the benefit of the doubt. The timing of the announcement helps soften the blow of a Hall of Fame election this week that inducted no one, a reminder of how performance-enhancing drugs damaged the soul of baseball.

More than anything, this is a historic collaboration. Giving blood isn’t easy. It makes some people squeamish. It’s a personal invasion that a union can easily politicize and defeat in collective bargaining.

Yet Major League Baseball became the first major sporting league to test for human growth hormone, or HGH, beating the NFL, where the league and union agreed to such testing in 2011 and are still haggling over details.

The new policy marks a dramatic change in the culture of baseball. The players are no longer hiding behind their litigators and union leaders. They are accepting a partnership and accountability.

A Major League Baseball clubhouse is a world of perpetual adolescence, where cheaters and liars are condoned, but nothing is worse than a snitch. This conspiracy of silence was the biggest tragedy of the Steroid Era, where players could either use performance-enhancing drugs or not. But they couldn’t open their mouths and tell the world what was happening to their sport.

To this day, many blame the media for not being savvy about the issue in real time, for not questioning what our eyes couldn’t believe.

Please remember the context:

Gullible fans and media members who bought into the long-ball phenomenon did so because it put the game back on the marquee, back in the national conversation. By 1998, baseball lagged well behind the NFL in popularity, plagued by work stoppages and a canceled World Series.

For those who grew up when baseball ruled, the long-awaited renaissance awoke powerful memories and confirmed childhood passions. It was a seductive, sublime time to be a spectator and easy to look past the bulging biceps.

Sometimes, being stupid and irrational is part of being a fan.

But the players knew. They knew and kept their mouths shut. That’s the way it works in baseball, where there are a million shared secrets in every clubhouse. For collective harmony, they all agree to watch each other’s backs, even if someone is cheating.

That won’t be necessary any longer. When blood testers start showing up at stadiums across America, there will be nowhere left to hide and no secrets left to keep.

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley @arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8253. Follow him at twitter.com/danbickley.

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